


This Is Where We Meet Again

by spaceprincess97



Category: Dalton Academy Series
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-08
Updated: 2020-12-08
Packaged: 2021-03-09 20:34:02
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 702
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27952391
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/spaceprincess97/pseuds/spaceprincess97
Summary: Blaine visits Jude's grave by himself for the first time.
Relationships: Blaine Anderson/Jude Whittaker
Kudos: 1





	This Is Where We Meet Again

For the last ten years, someone’s always come with Blaine when he visits Jude. Shane, mostly. Erin and Becca, when they visited. Kurt, for a while. But this time, he goes alone. 

It’s late October but it’s still warm as Blaine trudges through the cemetery. In the past, he’d always worried about the heat ruining the gel in his hair; but to the relief of everyone, he’d finally relinquished his hair products and his curls hang soft and loose. 

He reaches the Whittaker family plot and it’s comforting to see the fresh flowers on Jude’s grave. From Erin, maybe, or Jude’s mom. Either way, it’s just nice to have proof that people still care. 

“Jude.”

Blaine’s voice breaks through the silence. He pauses, rereads the inscription on the headstone:  _ When words become unclear, I shall focus with photographs. When images become inadequate, I shall be content with silence. _

“Shane’s married, can you believe that?”

Blaine shoves his hands in his pockets and shakes his head. 

“All those months planning, and then he and Reed decided they had enough and just… eloped. Dragged a few of us along with them, but it was small. It was—it was nice. You would have liked it.”

He looks down at his shoes. His old converse, barely holding together after all this time. He’d stopped wearing them pretty soon after he started at Dalton, wanting to preserve them. Now he only wears them when he goes to see Jude. 

“Kurt and I broke up.”

His voice breaks, just a little. 

“It’s for the best. I know it is, I just…”

He trails off, thinking. 

“I don’t know. I think I just got comfortable, you know? Being half of a whole.”

Blaine sits cross-legged before the grave and sighs. 

“We’re still friends. We’re always gonna be friends, and I’m glad we had that time, but—”

Blaine sucks in a breath.

“I just wish we had gotten to have that, too.”

It took a long time for Blaine to accept that when Jude died, he was falling in love with him. It was like he shut it all down, pushed every lingering glance and brush of their hands out of his mind like they’d never happened. It was only after working through it all, the fear and the rage and the possessive tendencies—that he realized part of him was holding on to what he never got to have. 

“Did you know? I don’t—I just—”

Blaine shakes his head, frustrated. 

“I should have told you how I felt.”

So he tells him now. Blaine says every thing he never got to tell Jude, about how he liked the way Jude’s eyes felt distant when he saw something worth capturing on film, how Jude would fiddle with his lens cap when he was thinking. How even when Erin was telling a story, Blaine would find himself watching Jude, to see how he would react. All the little pieces of them that Blaine had tucked away for so many years. 

He just keeps talking and talking, letting the memories spill out as fast as he can think them. Eventually, he falls silent and just sits with them. Remembering. Trying to frame Jude’s face in his head from memory, realizing how ten years feels eternal and fleeting all at once. 

“I miss you,” Blaine finally says. He swipes at the tears wet on his cheeks. “I always say that, but it’s true.”

Blaine stands, pulling his bag over his shoulder. He tightens his grip on the strap, repurposed from the old camera that Reed still has. 

“Shane says he misses you, too. Says he’ll come by soon.”

Blaine puts a hand on the headstone, feeling the warmth of the sun-soaked granite. 

“I’ll see you next time, Jude,” Blaine says softly. He lets his hand fall, then reaches into his bag and pulls out a small stack of photos. He drops them in a neat pile next to the flowers. Blaine knows they’ll just bleach in the sun. But they belong there, he thinks as he walks away, those photos from Shane and Reed’s wedding. After all, they were taken on Jude’s camera. A piece of him they still hadn’t lost. 

**Author's Note:**

> Originally posted on Discord on November 12th, 2020.


End file.
